Google employes a “User Experience Team” that creates designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable. The following is excerpted from Google’s Corporate Site. Their rules are excellent guidelines for anyone planning their Web presence.

They suggest that a Flexible Web Designproduct that gets the following principles right is “Googley” – and will satisfy and delight people all over the world. The following is excerpted from their site and, if you haven’t already done so, their site IS worth a visit for anyone in business; they are the world’s top search engine and they make many of the rules.

1. Focus on people lives, work, dreams. (Some of the more successful on-line entrepreneurs focus on people’s dreams and how to turn your deepest wishes into reality, i.e. Jack Canfield and Dr. Wayne Dyer.) Google’s User Experience Team works to discover needs and creates products that solve real-world problems and spark creativity of all kinds.
2. Simplicity is powerful. Simplicity starts with the design of a product‘s fundamental functions. Avoid adding baubles and bling that you don’t need.
3. Don’t waste people’s time: In the work world, NOTHING is more valuable than people‘s time. Google pages load quickly, thanks to slim code and carefully selected image files. The most essential features and text are placed in the easiest-to-find locations. Eliminate unnecessary clicks, typing, and steps. Speed is a boon to users. No one has time to figure out your site or your services/products.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts. The best Google designs appear quite simple on the surface but include powerful features that are easily accessible to those users who want them. Our intent is to invite beginners with a great initial experience while also attracting power users whose excitement and expertise will draw others to the product.
5. Dare to innovate. Design consistency builds a trusted foundation for Google products, makes users comfortable, and speeds their work. Google encourages innovative, risk-taking designs whenever they serve the needs of users.
6. Design for the world. The World Wide Web has opened all the resources of the Internet to people everywhere. Currently, many users explore Google products while strolling with a Global Mobile Device, not sitting at a desk with a personal computer, so you may need to learn to design for that market. Google’s goal is to design products that are contextually relevant and available through the medium and methods that make sense to users. Google‘s mission (and our mission) is to make the world‘s information universally accessible and provide a useful and enjoyable experience for everyone, including those with physical and cognitive limitations.
   

   Liquid or fluid layoutschange width based on the user’s unique device viewing size. These types of layouts have always been possible with tables but offer new design challenges as well as opportunities when built with CSS. This book, for experienced Web designers with some CSS experience, outlines how to do this successfully.

7. Plan for today‘s and tomorrow‘s business. (I spend much of my time redesigning Web sites that did not take growth into consideration. A well-designed site can last for years . . . and should . . . but it has to be considered in the initial plan.)
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind. Work towards a clutter-free design A positive first impression makes users comfortable, assures them that the product is reliable and professional, and encourages people to make the product their own. Ensure that pages load quickly and doesn‘t distract visitors (or the business owners) from their goals. Visually appealing images, color, and fonts are balanced against the needs for speed, scannable text, and easy navigation. Audience and cultural context matter.
9. Trust: Good design can go a long way to earn the trust of your audience. Establishing reliability starts with the basics – for example, making sure the interface is efficient and professional, actions are easily reversed, ads are clearly identified, terminology is consistent, and users are never unhappily surprised. Be transparent about how information is used and/or shared (if at all).
10. Add a human touch. Text and design elements are friendly, quirky, and smart – and not boring, close-minded, or arrogant. Google text talks directly to people and offers the same practical, informal assistance that anyone would offer to a neighbor who asked a question. No design is perfect.

Google Analytics validates that “content is king.”

The Internet has more than 1 billion Websites, yet fewer than 20% are visible; most receive a dozen or so visitors each month.

Many of the Web sites you are up against have teams of writers, editors, photographers, artists, and programmers feeding their sites (i.e. SFGate.com is owned by Hearst Corporation and fed by San Francisco Chronicle media professionals).

You CAN play with the Big Boys and keep your service/company on top of searches by adding frequent content relevant to your business. That is what feeds search engines.

Check your site by visiting Google Analytics:

• Sites developed by D.A. Levy, MarinEStudios

Report as of May 17, 2011

What should it cost?

$300? $500? $1500? $10,000? We know of a $45,000 site; it’s beautiful but it didn’t do its job, which was to sell high-end real estate in Mexico. Yes, the development was partly poor timing given the world’s real estate ills; in that case, perhaps a more modest beginning would have sufficed.

Each website project is unique and each should, of course, reflect your business and goals specifically. Think of your Web site as your storefront or office and think of it as though you were opening a physical location. Your Web is extremely important to your growth in today’s marketing arena; it should reflect you and entice people to “walk into” all areas of your service(s).

Your site should ideally give a sense of you as a business owner and of your participation in your community. “Slick” sites do not impart that feeling. They look “manufactured.” A warm site with appropriate content (Content is King) for your and your wares will also utilize the power of search engine placement. If your site is visually stunning but can’t be found through searches, it is useless. Or if it is found through search engines and people find you but are not drawn in, then your business will suffer. (My preference does lean towards beautiful sites, so if you share that predeliction and don’t really know how to build sites, consider StudioPress Themes for WordPress. If you have never built a Web site, and if you need an online presence for the lowest possible cost, a blog is definitely the way to go! Blogs are far easier to build/maintain than are Web sites.)

Considerations:

• Focus on your area of expertise; don’t try to be all things to all people.
• Keep crucial information ”above the fold,” which is a newspaper strategy. Papers were designed so that the first paragraph had the basic information needed; the rest of the story was detail. This is more important now that people are viewing sites on handhelds. Not much shows up on little screens.
• Find sites you like to show to your designer; save the urls (Web address) so you can review what you do/don’t like about given sites.
• Are you going to have to update your site with new offerings? We advise against this unless you add a Blog component as Blogs are easier to maintain than are traditional Web sites. Note that you can have a site that is completely a Blog; it depends on your needs.
• Avoid too many bells and whistles; they do not necessarily display on all computers and some do not display at all on handheld devices, which, again, is a growing market. Some designers will try to convince you to try to latest whatever; that isn’t always the best way to go.
• Add a social networking component, i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn at a minimum. Announce additions to your shop/services at least once a month.
• Consider an eMail marketing component so that flyers are sent to your growing audience each month . . . eMarketing is far less expensive than mail marketing.
• If you offer visual services, i.e. interior designer, be sure that the images on your site are quality and optimized properly. A poorly lit photo will harm more than help.
• This is SO important: Select your Web/Blog hosting company carefully. Your associate with his/her own host company down the street from your business probably won’t have the services necessary to your success, especially as you grow. You NEED a company that has a solid track record, is available 24/7, is reasonably priced, has a friendly and knowledgable staff, can fix things quickly and has all the latest features should you need more bells and whistles! This is first-hand knowledge from years of working with GoDaddy.com for many years.
  

Case Study

We built a small site (eight pages) for Steve Hewett, a local landscape contractor. He wasn’t sure about whether or not he needed a Web presence and, not surprisingly, didn’t really know what he wanted.

He gave the project over to Denny Creative and MarinEStudios. Hewett is a friendly church-going outdoors man, so we built a friendly site, including images of his dog Cali who is the official site inspector — that’s her below checking out a new patio to ensure that the bricks are level.

We also included images of some of his fishing outings with his daughter and his buddies. This, too, was a strategic move; fly fishermen have some of the highest demographics in the country; people want to feel comfortable when they work with you, especially if you are coming into their home as do  contractors.

Hewett has gotten jobs because of Cali and has made life-long friends through contracting jobs because of similar interests. If he rode mountain bikes — another high demographic, we would have included images of him on, say, Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County.

A new set of free videos are now available from Adam Short, creator of Niche Profit Classroom; they outline a simple formula for generating 5 figures per month (on autopilot) using a very powerful form of affiliate marketing.

With these videos, you can keep your costs down while learning if affiliate marketing is for you and how much income might be generated. All in all, they provide GREAT education on how to create a money-making affiliate site; an increasing number of my clients are adding affiliate marketing programs to their existing business sites in order to increase income during these tight times in our country.

You can access the 5 free videos HERE and following are ideas of what you’ll learn:

• How to create simple 5-10 page content websites that each generate between $500 and $1500 a month on complete autopilot.
• A secret search engine shortcut that will propel your sites to the top of the search engines in as little as 2 days.
• How to convert all of that free traffic into money at 5-10% conversion rates on complete autopilot.
• How to setup everything on complete autopilot so that each site is a true set-it and forget-it profit generating machine that requires no extra work or time investment and generates income for years into the future

Sounds good doesn’t it? It’s amazing! Click here to get your 5 free videos.

I’m not sure when Adam is planning on taking the videos down, so it’s best to check them out soon.

A few basic tips to save you money:

1. A domain name. An example of a domain name is: myaffiliatesite.com. Domain names are less than $20 per year and can be purchased through www.goDaddy.com. Never sign up with a service that says they are $30, $40 or $50. Some premium domain names such as wine.com do cost, oh, $2.5 million, but that’s very rare.
2. If you do not have a web hosting service, one costs around $4 – $10 a month. Don’t pay more than that to start. Plans can be upgraded if needed, and upgrades are often NOT needed. My oldest site The Maritime Heritage Project is huge and I’m still paying less than $5/month . . . also through www.goDaddy.com
3. Authoring software to create the site. If you do not have website authoring software, goDaddy.com also has that on their site with “Web Site Tonight.” Note: Although I love goDaddy and have been using them for years for registering names and hosting sites, I think it’s best to have your own software as it will make your life easier in the long run.
4. If you are creating a blog, try using WordPress. It is also freeware; that IS available also from goDaddy.com and Blogs are far easier to build/maintain than are Web sites. You can use goDaddy for one-stop shopping in this case: register your domain name, pay for an inexpensive hosting package (the aforementioned “less-than-$5/month”, and download the Blog free from their site.
5. FTP software to get your pages to your web account. With a blog, you may not need FTP software. I use ws.FTP.pro, but sophisticated Web design packages such as DreamWeaver have FTP built in.
6. Joining an affiliate program like Google Affiliates, Amazon.com and Commission Junction is free. If there are costs involved, do not sign up for that program.
7. Creating a PayPal or similar account is free. If there are costs involved, do not sign up for that account.